


Altered Reality

by mggislife2789



Category: Criminal Minds
Genre: Fake Character Death, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-15
Updated: 2017-06-15
Packaged: 2018-11-14 13:05:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,581
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11208648
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mggislife2789/pseuds/mggislife2789
Summary: Disclaimer: I don't own any of these characters or their original stories. This is only for fun. It's where my brain goes after the credits roll. No copyright intended. Better safe than sorry. ;)





	Altered Reality

JJ hated keeping this secret, but she’d promised Emily - and she loved Beatrice as much as her own son. The good thing was Doyle had been captured, so Emily could finally come home and see her daughter again, but Beatrice was 15, headstrong and passionate just like her mother, and had been crying for the last seven months thinking her mother was dead.

The only two people who were allowed to know were she and Hotch - not even Emily’s own child could know where she was, or that she was even still alive for fear of Doyle coming out of the shadows and hurting either one of them, or Declan. Since Emily had gone into witness protection, JJ had been raising Bea, teaching her at home so that she never had to be out of her sight. “Ready to go, Bea?” she asked, watching as the sullen teenager flashed her a strained smile. 

“Yea, Aunt JJ,” she said softly. Today was seven and a half months since her mother had “died.” JJ had been wracked with guilt every minute of every day for keeping the biggest of secrets from her niece, but she had to, for both of their sakes. 

Nearly a hour half later, JJ and Bea made their way into the Bureau with coffees in hand, but JJ hadn’t even taken a sip of hers. The nausea was too strong. Even smelling the coffee was making her insides spin around and tie themselves in knots. So far, the only one in the office was Hotch, who made strained eye contact with JJ. Both were aware that the blow-up was imminent, not only from Bea, but from the rest of the team as well. They knew they’d done what had to be done, but that didn’t make it any easier.

“Okay, everyone,” Hotch said, feeling his own stomach lurch at the reality of what he was about to do. “I need you all to know that about eight months back, I made a decision that affected the entire team. It was a need-to-know basis, so the only ones aware were JJ and myself. However, if anyone has any issues, please come to me.” 

Looking down at the floor, Bea watched as a shadow crept its way up the doorway, coming closer and closer until the shadow finally meet the person casting it. “Mom?” Bea breathed. Everyone looked between Hotch, JJ and Emily, trying to comprehend what they were seeing. “We buried you…I…I BURIED YOU!” Beatrice yelled between staggering breaths, covering her mouth as a waterfall of tears cascaded from her eyes. How could she?

“I’m so sorry,” she said, standing still in the doorway, hesitant to approach anyone for fear they hated her. One by one, Garcia, Reid, Rossi and Morgan hugged her in varying degrees of relief, betrayal, sadness and glee, and then she turned toward her daughter. Each woman wore matching looks of sorrow, but behind Beatrice’s eyes was a layer of betrayal the likes of which Emily had never hoped to see. Being away from the love of her life for the past eight months had been absolute hell, each day wearing on in slow motion. The only thing that had given her any solace was the fact that JJ loved her like her own and had sworn to protect her with her life. “Bea, baby, I’m so sorry.” With a few steps, she closed the space between them and extended her arms, but Bea backed up.

“I buried you. I watched your casket get lowered into the ground. I’ve cried for the last seven months thinking I’d never see you again or get to hug you, AND YOU’RE ALIVE?!” The anger rose in her face, now red as a cherry. Her head was spinning with the reality that everything she thought she knew was a lie.

Emily started shaking, the tears spilling over slightly as she tried to tell her daughter why certain choices had been made. “With me dead, Doyle wouldn’t go after you or Declan. But if I was alive, you were both in danger. I left because I love you more than anything.”

Again, she tried to close the gap, but Bea wasn’t having it, and it was breaking Emily’s heart into smaller and smaller pieces. “I’m 15. I understand your job. I could’ve kept the secret, but instead you chose to leave me and lie to me. I would’ve rather Doyle come after me than go on living thinking I was never gonna see my mother again! How dare you!” All was silent in the conference room, the other members of the team not wanting to intervene in a family moment. 

“Bea, I-”

“Don’t!” Her hands curled up into fists. She had no idea what to do, where to go, nothing - everything felt surreal. “I don’t wanna hear any excuses. You let me think you were dead. Fuck you!” She turned to walk out the door and caught the eyes of the other two who knew. “And fuck you! And you, Aunt JJ! I was sobbing every day and you watched! You watched as I was doubled over in pain, throwing up in the sink because I was never going to see my mother again and you knew…Oh my god.” 

Spinning around on her heels, she approached the doorway where her mother had reemerged and when her mother tried to follow, she turned around, picked up the nearest item that wasn’t nailed down and hurled it at the wall, watching as it burst into a thousand pieces before leaving everyone behind. “Oh my god,” Emily sobbed, crouching down to the floor. “My baby hates me. Oh my god.”

JJ couldn’t say anything. Even Hotch, normally so calm under pressure, couldn’t manage to come up with anything. “Reid, will you?”

Knowing what she meant, Spencer sped after her. Emily couldn’t go near her right now and neither could JJ or Hotch, so someone else needed to take care of her. This was the way things had to be done, but would her baby girl ever forgive her?

—-

“Bea!” Spencer called for the third time. She spun around and he barely dodged her arms as they flailed wildly in anger. 

Upon seeing her uncle, her anger was lost and the sadness set in. “How could she do that to me? To us? We would’ve kept her secret. She couldn’t trust us? Me. Why didn’t she trust me, Uncle Spencer?” He knew he was supposed to see that this was the way things had to be, but he couldn’t reconcile what had happened months ago and just now either, so instead, he held his niece tightly as she sobbed. 

After rocking her back and forth for 15 minutes, Bea felt numb. “I can’t go home with JJ, or Mom. Do you mind if I stay with you for a couple of days?”

Spencer nodded, giving her hand a squeeze before kissing the raven hair that so reminded him of her mother. “Of course. You know she loves you, right?”

“I don’t know anything anymore.”

—-

A week and a half passed before Bea could find the strength to talk to anyone. Every day, she’d just get up and do her lessons for the day. She ignored everyone and everything, just floating from place to place with her anger bottled up inside her. As she paced the floors of her uncle’s apartment, she heard the door creak open. “I’m sorry,” Spencer said, as Emily pushed out from behind him.

“Go away!” she screamed.

“No!” Emily replied. “Talk to me.” Quietly, Spencer slipped out of his own apartment to leave them alone. “Yell. Scream. Cry. Tell me you hate me. Something! Just talk to me please!” Her voice cracked as the floodgates opened.

A sob wracked through Bea’s body as she hugged her sweatshirt tighter to her body. “Why couldn’t you trust me? You could’ve told me. I wouldn’t have said anything, but you let me grieve, Mom. You let me watch your casket go into the ground.” She started to shake with anger and took a deep breath. 

Emily inhaled hard, holding her breath without realizing it. “It wasn’t about trust baby,” she breathed. The thought that Bea thought otherwise broke her heart. “Doyle had to believe that I was gone. If anyone else had known, he would’ve seen in your faces that I was alive, and he would’ve hurt you to bring me out of hiding. I had to leave until he was gone.”

The feeling of understanding and yet not understanding was a hard emotion to reconcile. “But you died…I watched you die, Mom!” Collapsing forward, Emily caught her baby girl as she sobbed, trying to figure out how the woman she called mom had died eight months earlier and reappeared. Considering Emily’s own life hadn’t made sense for the last eight months, she couldn’t imagine how her daughter felt. 

“Baby, I’m so sorry. If I had stayed, he would’ve tortured you, and if anything ever happened to you, I would never have been able to forgive myself,” she said, rubbing her baby’s back as she cried. Bea was going to be mad at her - for a long time; she could feel it. But holding her while she cried was enough for her right now. She was hugging her. In the months she’d been gone, she’d grown so much. She was real and she was here. For now, that was enough.


End file.
